The Open Book of Social Innovation Social Innovator series - ways to design, develop and grow social innovation ppt

SOCIAL INNOVATOR SERIES: WAYS TO DESIGN, DEVELOP AND GROW SOCIAL INNOVATION Robin Murray Julie Caulier-Grice Geoff Mulgan THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION 2 TITLE FOREWORD This volume – part of a series of methods and issues in social innovation – describes the hundreds of methods and tools for innovation being used across the world, as a first step to developing a knowledge base. It is the result of a major collaboration between NESTA (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and the Young Foundation – two organisations that are committed to the role that social innovation can play in addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time. The Open Book presents a varied, vibrant picture of social innovation in practice and demonstrates the vitality of this rapidly emerging economy. It is fantastically rich, and demonstrates the diversity of initiatives being led by entrepreneurs and campaigners, organisations and movements worldwide. Together with the other volumes in this Series, we hope that this work provides a stronger foundation for social innovation based on the different experiences and insights of its pioneers. Like the social ventures it describes, we want this work to grow and develop. Your comments, thoughts and stories are welcome at the project website: www.socialinnovator.info Dr Michael Harris, NESTA Published March 2010 CONTENTS 1 CONTENTS Introduction 2 Section 1 The process of social innovation 11 1. Prompts, inspirations and diagnoses 14 2. Proposals and ideas 30 3. Prototyping and pilots 50 4. Sustaining 58 5. Scaling and diffusion 82 6. Systemic change 107 Section 2 Connecting people, ideas and resources 124 Section 3 Ways of supporting social innovation 141 1. Support in the public sector 146 2. Support in the grant economy 167 3. Support in the market economy 180 4. Support in the informal or household economy 195 Bibliography 209 Index 211 Acknowledgements 220 2 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION This book is about the many ways in which people are creating new and more effective answers to the biggest challenges of our times: how to cut our carbon footprint; how to keep people healthy; and how to end poverty. It describes the methods and tools for innovation being used across the world and across different sectors – the public and private sectors, civil society and the household – in the overlapping fields of the social economy, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise. It draws on inputs from hundreds of organisations to document the many methods currently being used around the world. The materials we’ve gathered here are intended to support all those involved in social innovation: policymakers who can help to create the right conditions; foundations and philanthropists who can fund and support; social organisations trying to meet social needs more effectively; and social entrepreneurs and innovators themselves. In other fields, methods for innovation are well understood. In medicine, science, and to a lesser degree in business, there are widely accepted ideas, tools and approaches. There are strong institutions and many people whose job requires them to be good at taking ideas from inception to impact. There is little comparable in the social field, despite the richness and vitality of social innovation. Most people trying to innovate are aware of only a fraction of the methods they could be using. INTRODUCTION Hands, courtesy of Old Ford School, Room 13. INTRODUCTION 3 This book, and the series of which it is a part, attempt to fill this gap. In this volume, we map out the hundreds of methods for social innovation as a first step to developing a knowledge base. In the other volume of the Social Innovator series, we look at specific methods in greater depth, exploring ways of developing workable ideas and setting up a social venture in a way that ensures its financial sustainability; and that its structures of accountability, governance and ownership resonate with its social mission. 1 We have also launched an accompanying website, www.socialinnovator.info, to gather comments, case studies and new methods. We’re also very conscious of what’s not in here. This is very much a first cut: there are many methods we haven’t covered; many parts of the world that aren’t well represented (including Africa and the Middle East); and many which we’ve only been able to describe in a very summary form. The field we cover is broad. Social innovation doesn’t have fixed boundaries: it happens in all sectors, public, non-profit and private. Indeed, much of the most creative action is happening at the boundaries between sectors, in fields as diverse as fair trade, distance learning, hospices, urban farming, waste reduction and restorative justice. Nevertheless, definitions have their place. Our interest is in innovations that are social both in their ends and in their means. Specifically, we define social innovations as new ideas (products, services and models) that simultaneously meet social needs and create new social relationships or collaborations. In other words, they are innovations that are both good for society and enhance society’s capacity to act. 2 The context for social innovation Why has social innovation moved centre stage over the last decade? The main reason is that existing structures and policies have found it impossible to crack some of the most pressing issues of our times – such as climate change, the worldwide epidemic of chronic disease, and widening inequality. Intractable social problems The classic tools of government policy on the one hand, and market solutions on the other, have proved grossly inadequate. The market, by itself, lacks the incentives and appropriate models to solve many of these issues. Where there are market failures (due to non-competitive markets, externalities or public 4 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION goods), these tasks have fallen either to the state or civil society. However, current policies and structures of government have tended to reinforce old rather than new models. The silos of government departments are poorly suited to tackling complex problems which cut across sectors and nation states. Civil society lacks the capital, skills and resources to take promising ideas to scale. Rising costs The prospective cost of dealing with these issues threatens to swamp public budgets, and in the case of climate change, or healthcare in the US, private budgets as well. To take only one instance, if radical policies cannot stem the increase in chronic diseases, the cost of healthcare is forecast to rise from 9 per cent to 12.5 per cent of GDP in the UK in 15 years and, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, from 16 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 25 per cent in 2025, rising to 37 per cent in 2050. As in climate change, pollution control, waste reduction, poverty and welfare programmes, and other fields such as criminal justice or traffic congestion, the most effective policies are preventative. But effective prevention has been notoriously difficult to introduce, in spite of its apparent economic and social benefits. Old paradigms As during earlier technological and social transformations, there is a disjunction between existing structures and institutions and what’s needed now. This is as true for the private as for the social economy. New paradigms tend to flourish in areas where the institutions are most open to them, and where the forces of the old are weak. So, for example, there is more innovation around self-management of diseases and public health than around hospitals; more innovation around recycling and energy efficiency than around large scale energy production; more innovation around public participation than in parliaments and assemblies; and more innovation around active ageing than around pension provision. An emerging social economy Much of this innovation is pointing towards a new kind of economy. It combines some old elements and many new ones. We describe it as a ‘social economy’ because it melds features which are very different from economies based on the production and consumption of commodities. Its key features include: • The intensive use of distributed networks to sustain and manage INTRODUCTION 5 relationships, helped by broadband, mobile and other means of communication. • Blurred boundaries between production and consumption. • An emphasis on collaboration and on repeated interactions, care and maintenance rather than one-off consumption. • A strong role for values and missions. Two themes – sometimes clashing, sometimes coinciding – give it its distinctive character. One comes from technology: the spread of networks; creation of global infrastructures for information; and social networking tools. The other comes from culture and values: the growing emphasis on the human dimension; on putting people first; giving democratic voice; and starting with the individual and relationships rather than systems and structures. Much of this economy is formed around distributed systems, rather than centralised structures. It handles complexity not by standardisation and simplification imposed from the centre, but by distributing complexity to the margins – to the local managers and workers on the shop floor, as well as to the consumers themselves. As a result, the role of the consumer changes from a passive to an active player: to a producer in their own right. Retail purchases that have been cast as the end point of the linear process of mass production are redefined as part of a circular process of household production and reproduction. The so- called consumer doubles as a domestic producer – a cook, a mother, a carer, a shopper, a driver, a nurse, a gardener, a teacher or student – entailing so much of what makes us human. This domestic sphere has previously been seen as outside the economy, as too complex and ungovernable, but has now come to be recognised as economically critical, with all the needs for support, tools, skills and advice that being a producer entails. In both the market and state economies, the rise of distributed networks has coincided with a marked turn towards the human, the personal and the individual. This has brought a greater interest in the quality of relationships (what Jim Maxmin and Shoshana Zuboff call the ‘support economy’); it has led to lively innovation around personalisation (from new types of mentor to personal accounts); a new world rich in information and feedback (such as AMEE, tracking carbon outputs in 150 different countries); growing interest 6 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION in pathways (for example from early childhood into adulthood) and service journeys (whether of a patient through a health system or a passenger through an airport). With this emphasis on the individual has come an interest in their experience as well as in formal outcomes, in subjective feedback as well as the quantitative metrics of the late 20th century state and economy (hence the rise of innovations like the Expert Patients programmes, or Patient Opinion). Public policy has also turned towards the household, through innovations like nurse-family partnerships and green concierges. What is distinct about social innovation? What is it about social innovation which is distinct from innovation in different fields? The definition we provided above emphasises that social innovation is distinctive both in its outcomes and in its relationships, in the new forms of cooperation and collaboration that it brings. As a result, the processes, metrics, models and methods used in innovation in the commercial or technological fields, for example, are not always directly transferable to the social economy. Measuring success Measuring success in the social economy is particularly problematic. In the market the simple and generally unambiguous measures are scale, market share and profit. In the social field the very measures of success may be contested as well as the tools for achieving results. Is it good or bad to cut car use? Is it good or bad to replace professional care by voluntary care? Is a good school one that excels at exam results? Is it always a good thing for an NGO to grow bigger? The answers are never straightforward and are themselves the subject of argument, evaluation and assessment. As we show, there has been a great deal of innovation around metrics – from tools to judge the impact of a particular project or programme to meta-analyses and assessments of much larger processes of social change. Organisational forms And then there are the organisational forms for innovation itself. We show that many innovations take shape within organisations – public agencies, social enterprises, mutuals, co-ops, charities, companies as well as loose associations. But the many examples set out below also show a field that is grappling with how to escape the constraints of organisation so as to make innovation itself open and social: posting ideas and welcoming responses from INTRODUCTION 7 anyone; involving users at every stage as well as experts, bureaucrats and professionals; designing platforms which make it easy to assemble project teams or virtual organisations. Organisational forms are important for any kind of innovation, but particularly for the ones that are truly systemic in nature. As we show these invariably involve more than a new service or model: they also create a change in relationships of power, and a change in how people think and see. Invariably, systems changes stretch far beyond the boundaries of any single organisation. Coalitions and networks Coalitions and networks are increasingly turning out to be the key to successful change (this is well described in Stephen Goldsmith’s forthcoming book on civic entrepreneurship in the USA). Whereas in business the firm is the key agent of innovation, in the social field the drive is more likely to come from a wider network, perhaps linking some commissioners in the public sector, providers in social enterprises, advocates in social movements, and entrepreneurs in business. This is one of many reasons why it’s misleading to translate business models directly into the social field. For example, trying too hard to privatise ideas, or protect their IP, is more likely to stall the innovation process than to galvanise it. But public structures can be equally inhibiting if they try to squeeze a new idea into the logic of siloed departments or professions. No one knows what will emerge from the feverish experiment, trial and error and rapid learning that are accompanying the birth of this new economy. But we can be certain that its emergence will encourage ever more interest in how innovation can best be supported, orchestrated and harnessed to speed up the invention and adoption of better solutions. Methods Innovation isn’t just a matter of luck, eureka moments or alchemy. Nor is it exclusively the province of brilliant individuals. Innovation can be managed, supported and nurtured. And anyone, if they want, can become part of it. These are some of the key messages that we’ve taken from the most creative thinkers about innovation – such as John Kao and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Mark Moore, Manuel Castells and Roberto Unger. They have shown that social innovation is a relatively open field and a relatively open process. Certainly, some are more equal than others – and governments with large budgets and 8 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION law-making powers can achieve large-scale change more easily than small community groups. Yet most social change is neither purely top-down nor bottom-up. It involves alliances between the top and the bottom, or between what we call the ‘bees’ (the creative individuals with ideas and energy) and the ‘trees’ (the big institutions with the power and money to make things happen to scale). In what follows we describe many hundreds of methods being used for innovation around the world. They range from ways of thinking to very practical tools for finance or design. Some of them are specific to sectors – government, business or charity. Some are specific to national cultures. But there are many common patterns, and one of the purposes of this project has been to encourage cross-pollination. Much innovation comes from the creative blending of ideas from multiple sources. For example, bringing together diagnostic computer programmes, call centres and nurses to provide new kinds of healthcare; bringing together the very old idea of ‘circles of support’ brought within the criminal justice system; or bringing the idea of enforceable rights into the world of the family and childhood. The tools of innovation will also develop through creative blending and recombination of disparate elements and ideas. We’re already seeing, for example, innovators combining the funding methods used for science and venture capital with those from tendering and grant giving. Others are combining ethnography, visualisation techniques from product design, user- involvement ideas from social movements, and commissioning methods from the public sector. Business has already adopted some of the models for mobilising networks of users that were developed by the third sector in the 1960s and 1970s. Conversely, some NGOs are learning from venture capital not only how to finance emerging ideas, but also how to kill off ones that aren’t advancing fast enough to free up resources. Our hope is that by gathering many methods together we will accelerate these processes of creative recombination and experimentation. The structure of the book To structure the many methods we’ve collected we look at them through three different lenses: In Part 1 of this book, we look at the processes of innovation. We describe the stages of innovation as spreading outwards from prompts and ideas to [...]... (abusive husband mistreating his wife/factory owner exploiting the workers etc.) Boal called this and other types of participatory theatre, the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’.2 In forum theatre, spectators can try to rewrite the story by stopping the performance at any time, and taking over from one of the actors playing the oppressed individual If the other audience members do not think their suggestions... staff, other sectors, or other countries In this section, we look at ways of tapping into these sources, and engaging citizens, users and others in the design and development of solutions As we have mentioned elsewhere, the way an innovation is developed is just as important as the innovation itself The two are linked: the process will have an impact on the kind of innovation developed In most cases the. .. about the nature and form of participation, e.g what is the best way to engage and involve people? PROPOSALS AND IDEAS 31 Imagining Solutions There are a series of methods, especially within the field of design, which bring people together to develop solutions Often this is called ‘co-design’ Increasingly, some of these approaches are being used within the public sector to re-design services 37) User-led... each with their own message These cards were then used by health professionals to help people to manage their diabetes more effectively 1 24 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION These are the cards developed by the Design Council as part of their project with diabetes sufferers in Bolton The cards were used to help patients talk about diabetes and their experiences of living with it in a non-medical... In most cases the success of the innovation will rest on the participation and involvement of a wide variety of interests – the users and beneficiaries of the innovation as well as the producers and suppliers In the case of the public sector, the engagement of the public in the formulation of policy is even more crucial because it is tied up with issues of trust, legitimacy and representation This raises... the odds – all of our chances of success will increase if we can share our experiences and quickly reflect on what works and what doesn’t 10 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION End notes 1 Murray, R., Caulier-Grice, J and Mulgan, G (2009) Social Venturing.’ The Social Innovator Series London: NESTA 2 In their article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Phills, Deiglmeier and Miller define social. .. competencies, new jobs, and new forms of participation, as diverse elements that each contribute to improving the position of individuals in the workforce.” THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL INNOVATION 11 SECTION 1: THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL INNOVATION 1 Prompts 2 Proposals 6 Systemic change 3 Prototypes 4 Sustaining 5 Scaling 12 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION The six stages of social innovation We have identified... hold in the social economy in many other ways, whether through inspiration and emulation, or through the provision of support and know-how from one to another in a more organic and adaptive kind of growth 6) Systemic change This is the ultimate goal of social innovation Systemic change usually involves the interaction of many elements: social movements, business models, laws and regulations, data and infrastructures,... derelict buildings and spaces Mapping exercises can be employed to take stock of the local area, identifying empty spaces and opportunities for re-use In Croatia, for example, Platforma 9.18 mapped out what remained of the built landscape of Zagreb after the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s They mapped an extensive diagram of abandoned factories, offices and scraps of land, which they suggested could... reproduction, and physical mapping to represent the local area These maps illustrate the boundary of a particular village or settlement and the social and economic infrastructure – roads, water supply, agricultural land, crops and schools.6 1 20 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION 14) Ethnographic research techniques Ethnography is a holistic approach to research developed by anthropologists in order to understand . SOCIAL INNOVATOR SERIES: WAYS TO DESIGN, DEVELOP AND GROW SOCIAL INNOVATION Robin Murray Julie Caulier-Grice Geoff Mulgan THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION 2 TITLE FOREWORD This. what remained of the built landscape of Zagreb after the Yugoslav civil wars of the 1990s. They mapped an extensive diagram of abandoned factories, of ces and scraps of land, which they suggested. many of these issues. Where there are market failures (due to non-competitive markets, externalities or public 4 THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION goods), these tasks have fallen either to the